Month: July 2011

Bear in mind that there is but one redemption from the curse weighing upon you: self-destruction.
Thus spoke not Zarathustra but, of course, music's great bogeyman Richard Wagner, and no prizes for guessing which race he was addressing. The eclipse of this driven genius has often been predicted, and with friends ... Read More...

Despite today’s laissez-faire approach to dressing, vintage swimwear is all the rage this year. The internet abounds with websites selling original retro bathing costumes and trunks. You can find everything from all-in-one 1920s ensembles to super-snug ‘70s Spandex shorts. This may give men cause for alarm…
Choosing beachwear is a source ... Read More...

Dabbler reader Steve Buckley recommends a cricket classic, sometimes described as "the greatest sports book ever written"...
In his 1965 article ‘How to Build a Cricket Library’, John Arlott had Beyond a Boundary by CLR James as one of his essential twenty books on the game. Does anyone read it anymore? You ... Read More...

Frank Key's brand new paperback, Porpoises Rescue Dick Van Dyke, is now available. Here, exclusively for The Dabbler, he explains the gestation of this masterwork.
It was an ordinary day in November last year. By consulting my records I can see that I made no attempt to log the rainfall, temperature, ... Read More...

Mr Slang shines a light on another hero of slang, this time from the world of pulp fiction...
I reached for the doorknob of Linda LaMarre’s dressing room. Before I could turn it I heard a gurgling screech from inside, followed by a heavy thud. I yanked the portal open, catapulted ... Read More...

Win a copy of Memoirs of a Dervish
As we related at the end of our exclusive interview with Robert Irwin on Monday, courtesy of Profile Books, we have ten copies of his Memoirs of a Dervish to give away to members of the Dabbler Book Club.
The Spectator reckoned,
...this is a ... Read More...

There's been a slew of 'what does this say about Britain?' articles in the wake of the News of the World scandal (the answer can be summarised as 'nothing good', by the way). This is from The New York Times and is by an expat journo coming home. He concludes:
...a man ... Read More...

Gary Neville's first England cap coincided with John Major's "put up or shut up" Rose Garden challenge to his party critics early in the blistering summer of '95. I was a young man myself then, flatsharing in central London with friends. It was the fiftieth anniversary of VE-Day, the economy ... Read More...

Dabbler wine correspondent Henry Jeffreys reports on the new breed of wine merchants...
Do you remember when bookshops started sprouting coffee shops? People will come for a coffee, browse and end up buying a book or so the logic went. Something similar is happening with wine merchants. Traditionally they were forbidding ... Read More...

As regular readers might know, I've written a novel. I took its title from a Hardy poem, Midnight on the Great Western (you can buy Region of Sin for Kindle here).
This has been one of my favourite poems since I first read it as a teenager, more than likely whilst, and ... Read More...